News of the Week

In science news around the world this week, a tobacco company is seeking study data on young smokers' habits, 11,000 hectares are being added to Arizona's Petrified Forest National Park, Iceland's avalanche funds are being redirected to study volcano risk, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is reviewing whether to "uplist" the status of captive chimpanzees from "threatened" to "endangered," and the Turkish government has taken control of the Turkish Academy of Sciences.

The chain of events that led to the mysterious decline of lynxes in the United States may have begun with the extirpation of another species: the gray wolf, which was hunted to near-extinction in the United States during the 20th century. And this week's numbers quantify the amount a California science center has to pay a conservative group and the costs of insomnia.

Last week, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization warned of "a major resurgence of the H5N1 highly pathogenic avian influenza," but other international health organizations quickly played down the significance.

The brain endocast of Australopithecus sediba shows that despite retaining a small brain size, some reorganization of the frontal lobe had commenced, hinting at the later neural development seen in Homo.

The hand of Australopithecus sediba, a rare example in the hominid fossil record, shows short fingers and a long thumb consistent with improved precision gripping while retaining strength for climbing.

About The Cover

COVER The right forearm and hand (hand skeleton ∼12.3 centimeters long) of (Australopithecus sediba), specimen Malapa Hominin 2. Papers in this issue present a detailed look at the hands, feet, pelvis, brain endocast, and age of this hominid, which lived 2 million years ago, near the emergence of our genus, Homo. See p. 1402 Image: Peter Schmid, courtesy of Lee Berger and the University of the Witwatersrand